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shouting.
    Brandon raced around the concourse and when he judged the confusion to have peaked, he vaulted the turnstiles and hurtled down the final escalator. He ran down the platform and threw himself aboard the Brighton train.
    Looking back down the platform he saw Kat racing towards the train, just as the doors were starting to close. Brandon held them open and called out to her. Nobody seemed to be following her; she must have given the soldiers the slip. Brandon caught Kat in his arms as she hopped up. They both fell back and collapsed on the floor as the train pulled away and out of the station.
     
    They found Jason a few carriages down, sitting at a plastic table and rolling the cylinder back and forth across its surface. Brandon and Kat sat down opposite him. Jason rolled the cylinder over to Brandon. ‘Thanks Jason,’ he said. Jason just grunted.
    Kat was laughing. ‘Did you see the way they reacted?’ she said. ‘When they pulled out their guns, everyone went nuts. They really must be expecting aliens.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Brandon said. ‘I’ll only really believe that it’s aliens though when I see a great big flying saucer swoop down out of the sky. Until then we have to keep an open mind. We have to find evidence !’
    ‘Right now we know nothing about anything,’ Jason observed.
    ‘Story of your life,’ Kat teased.
    ‘We know that someone is out to destroy this cylinder,’ Brandon said. ‘And now that they’ve run out of meteors, they’re sending those brutes after us. I wonder how they found us at the school.’
    ‘If they do have a spaceship,’ Kat said, ‘then they might be scrutinising us from outer-space.’
    ‘ If they have a spaceship,’ Brandon repeated. ‘I wish I could work out how to open this.’ He was examining the cylinder as he spoke. It had the same weight and feel as a Maglite torch, with the same kind of raised and textured areas, but he could still find no obvious way to open it … if it could actually be opened.
    ‘I just hope that they can’t scrutinise us now that we’re on a speeding train,’ Jason said. He was constantly looking out of the window.
    They sat in silence for a while. As the train cleared London, they looked back and saw flames flickering over rooftops. An ugly glow covered the city: London was burning. The meteor impacts would generate a great deal of heat, Brandon reflected; it was easy to imagine fire catching and spreading through London’s densely-packed buildings.
    It wasn’t long before the train began to slow down.
    Three Bridges station. They had cleared the M25—the motorway that circled London—but it was still too close for Brandon’s liking. Somewhere up there was a huge meteor that everyone thought was going to miss Earth.
    He looked out onto the platform when the train doors opened. There weren’t so many crowds here, and most people were getting off, but Brandon carefully evaluated everyone who boarded. He was happy to see that there were no scary creatures or armed soldiers.
    A smartly-dressed man in his fifties sat down nearby—the only other passenger in their carriage. He unfolded a large broadsheet newspaper until he was almost completely hidden behind it.
    ‘Have you ever actually tried reading a paper that big?’ Brandon whispered, trying to lighten the mood. ‘It’s impossible. Your arms ache after five minutes.’
    Kat giggled, but Jason just gave Brandon a blank look as if to say, Who even reads newspapers ?
    ‘Brandon,’ Kat said. ‘What if Brighton’s been overtaken by aliens? What if they’ve captured your mum and we have to sneak in and rescue her? Or what if—’
    ‘What if she’s already dead?’ Brandon said. The shocked look on her face told him that she actually hadn’t considered that possibility. ‘Sorry Kat, I don’t mean to be pessimistic. I just don’t know what we’ll find.’
    Kat’s happy face turned glum.
    Brandon got up from his seat. ‘I’m just going to the …’ he said,